“If young people are prevented from making a life for themselves, who will be left to protect the forest?”

Just a few hours drive from the tourist towns of Cancun, Tulum, and Playa del Carmen sits one of Mexico's largest protected areas, the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. First established in 1989, the reserve — combined with the neighboring Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala — comprises the largest and least disturbed forest landscape in North and Central America. It's a biological treasure, home to 18 rare or endangered mammals, including five large cats: jaguars, jaguarundis, ocelots, pumas, and margays. Parrots nest in its trees, monkeys swing from branch to branch, and millions of bats do important work keeping insect populations under control.

Carmelina Martinez is an 18-year-old high school student who lives in a community just outside of Calakmul. Like most teeangers her age, Carmelina likes spending time with her friends and watching movies. Until recently, she wasn’t particularly excited about attending class. Her high school is a technical one, where students can pick up skills either in forestry or technology. She picked forestry, mostly because it seemed preferable to computer science, and because she did live in a forest. Her community is an ejido called Refugio.

Mexico's ejido system is nearly one of a kind. A system for community-based land ownership, ejidos conduct a range of forestry operations on the land granted to them by the federal government. They chop down tropical hardwoods like mahogany and cedar for use in furniture, musical instruments, and more, but only under the supervision of scientists who ensure that logging is conducted in the most sustainable way possible. By working to preserve the health of the forest that buffers the reserve, these communities help to ensure that the reserve itself — and all the wildlife that depend on it — remain protected.

From a conservation perspective, the ejido system is a resounding success. By allowing communities to benefit from the sustainable use of their natural resources, the overall ecosystem remains healthy.

But from a social perspective, the ejido system could be in trouble. Only male heads of each household — known as ejiditarios — are empowered to vote on ejido business. When an ejiditario dies, his vote is transferred to his oldest son. The only way for a woman to become an ejiditaria is if her husband dies, and he doesn't have a son to inherit his vote.

As a result, most young people like Carmelina — even the sons of ejiditarios — are left in the dark about the operations of the ejido; many fail even to see the value in the forests that lie just a few paces from their bedrooms. Perhaps unsurprisingly, until recently Carmelina did not envision a future for herself in Refugio after graduating from high school. Like so many others her age, her future plans involved finding work elsewhere, perhaps in a restaurant or a hotel in a nearby tourist city like Cancun or Tulum.

"You can't talk about the future of the forest without talking about youth," Maria Ghiso, education program manager for a U.S.-based nonprofit called Rainforest Alliance, tells Teen Vogue. If the young people don't see a future for themselves in their home communities, they'll simply leave, she says. This worldwide phenomenon is known as youth outmigration, and it's bad news for forest conservation.

That's why Ghiso, together with Rainforest Alliance colleagues, local educators, and some of the more progressive ejiditarios living near Calakmul, put together an after-school workshop called "Our Forest, Our Future," in partnership with a technical high school in a village called Zoh Laguna. By participating in the program, students are exposed to the beauty of the forest and its wildlife, often for the first time. They learn some basic principles in ecology, like the relationships between predators and prey, or between plants and the animals that rely on them for food and shelter.

"I've noticed a difference between those who have participated in the program and those who have not," Manuel Villalobos, director of the technical high school in Zoh Laguna, tells Teen Vogue. The most important impact of the workshop, he says, is that none of the participants have dropped out of school. "That's one of the biggest challenges that high schools in Mexico have," he says. He's also seen changes in how they resolve the social problems that inevitably arise among any group of teenagers. "They have more perspective," he says.

Workshop participants also learn about sustainable forestry practices, and have the opportunity to spend time with the ejiditarios as they work to monitor the forest and its inhabitants, identify trees suitable for chopping down, and convert those trees into lumber. By learning about ecology and conservation, the students are poised to intimately understand the differences between sustainable logging, a process which balances the continued survival of forest ecosystems while still allowing for the utilization of natural resources, and the non-sustainable alternatives which typically favor immediate gain over long-term forest health.

For many of the ejiditarios, this is also an opportunity to see just how interested and useful the youth can be. They may not be able to gain voting privileges, but they can be hired by their communities to conduct biological monitoring and provide scientific oversight. Until now, most ejidos have had to hire outside experts for those jobs.

But now, a group of young people, like Carmelina, is being groomed to acquire those skills. Ghiso says this isn't necessarily to deter the students from leaving their communities, but rather to open their eyes to the opportunities available at home.

Before participating in the workshop, Carmelina says she knew about the forest, of course, and that beyond her community was the reserve, but tells Teen Vogue, "It was whatever." Now that she's nearing completion of the two-year program, she says she has come to appreciate the uniqueness of the wild animals and plants in her backyard. "I learned to see the forest through new eyes," she says.

Now, Carmelina wants to become a biologist. She wants to study jaguars so she can help her community ensure that their forestry operations won't negatively impact the big cats. If she can become a biologist, she says, she can become a respected community member, one whose voice and opinions will matter, even if she won't formally have a vote.

But with tears falling from her eyes, Carmelina tells Teen Vogue that she knows it probably won't happen for her. She simply can't afford it. Public universities in Mexico are virtually free, but passing the entrance exam is difficult, and she would still have to pay for an apartment to live in far away from home. Even paying for a class to better prepare for the entrance exam is impossible for most, says Ghiso.

For Carmelina and her peers, these are intensely personal choices about their lives and careers. But the truth is that the long-term protection of rural forest ecosystems lies literally on their shoulders. To succeed at conservation on a global scale means empowering young people — especially young women — and finding ways to allow them to get the education that so many already so desperately want.

Indeed, women are statistically more likely to become migrants than are men, especially when work-related issues are their motivation. Women are also more likely to drop out of school, and, in part due to cultural norms regarding marriage, motherhood, and other unpaid household labor, are more likely to be functionally or explicitly locked out of rural labor markets.

Encouraging young men and women to become involved in forest conservation doesn't mean convincing them not to leave for the city, but rather to inspire them to make their own choices about what they want for their future and the future of their communities. Still, if young people are prevented from making a life for themselves in their home communities, they will no doubt try to find opportunities elsewhere. And if that happens, who will be left to protect the forest?